Still Unanswered

For hours ahead of time, the word was spread through Washington: at his press conference. President Kennedy was going to give the Flight Engineers' International Association, which was threatening a strike that would ground three major airlines, the same tough treatment that he had given Big Steel. But as it turned out, the difference was as between that of an ingot and an iota.

To be sure, Kennedy did place himself firmly against the threatened strike: "I strongly urge the flight engineers to meet their public responsibilities.'' But there was none of the abusive language that he used against the leaders of Big Steel. And where he had made a series of threats against the steel industry, he left governmental action against the flight engineers' union unspecified.

In fact, the flight engineers' union is a sitting duck. With 3.000 members, it has fewer U.S. votes than the Arabs. In a sense, its members are more professional men than laborers, and the union therefore has little influence within Big Labor. A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany wants it squeezed into the Air Line Pilots

Association. A Kennedy-appointed fact-finding commission last October suggested in effect that the jobs of third pilot and flight engineer be combined. The President requested that the issue be submitted to binding arbitration, and the airlines agreed. But the flight engineers, fearful lest they be swallowed up by the bigger (14,000 member) and better organized Pilots Association, refused.

When the argument came to a critical point. Labor Secretary Arthur Goldberg stepped in to keep the opponents up all night trying to reach a settlement. When they failed. Goldberg stormed out. announcing that the flight engineers were "free to strike.'' Then he went to the

White House to help Kennedy prepare his press conference statement.

Ever since the Big Steel crisis, one of the U.S.'s most controversial questions has been whether Kennedy would treat a union in the same way he did an industry.

Last week he was clearly trying to make an example of the little flight engineers' union. Said Engineers' President Ronald Brown: "I would like to believe the President would not knowingly make the rights and equities of any group of working men pawns in his struggle with the business community." But the stakes were not nearly the same, and Kennedy showed it by his relatively mild tones. Thus the big question remains unanswered.

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